having done a bunch of upgrades, i've always liked having the original drive with my cable card pairing stored on my shelf.

does a cable card pairing survive when i upgrade the hdd or will i need to repair it?

In my experience, having swapped in and out many drives (Stock 500GB->2TB->3TB->Stock 500GB->3TB) in three base ROAMIOS:

NO, nothing survives a drive change in a ROAMIO (base model).

This even includes the Season Passes and ToDo List, which could (sometimes) survive, along with cablecard pairing in PREMIERES.

The only things you can be assured will be retained are:

1. The most current software (stored in flash memory, not on the drive).

2. Your lifetime, or monthly contract, service status.

Everything else is YMMV (just because one person claims something was retained, does not mean all will have the same experience/results).

The last thing anybody should expect to keep, for a ROAMIO, is the cablecard pairing data. If your MSO doesn't require actual pairing to a specific device, that's a whole different situation. Otherwise, even if things appear to have been retained, there is a good chance that the cablecard (and TA, if applicable) will not be in a fully-authorized state, resulting in varying degrees of channels not being available. The most noticeable ones would be premium, and/or channel pack, type channels.

does a cable card pairing survive when i upgrade the hdd or will i need to repair it?

Depends on how big of jerks your cable company are and if you have premium channels. Comcast with no premiums = phone tree hell to get the card re-paired. FIOS with no premiums - moved the cable card from my S3 to the Roamio and it worked with no need to call Verizon.

Go figure...

And for my season passes, I just transferred them on tivo.com to another Tivo temporarily - then back to my Roamio after I swapped in the 3TB drive (which worked flawlessly, BTW). And yes, the Tivo.com season pass manager scrambled their order - but with four tuners, thankfully conflicts are a thing of the past. Even if I dedicate one to the Tivo mini for live TV, I still have yet to have a situation where more than three tuners are recording with my current 70+ season passes - woot!

__________________
Tivo Roamio and Tivo Mini - woot!
Tivo Premiere - probably to be replaced by another Mini
Series 3 - On the way out the door
Tivo HD - On the way out the door

Popped a 2TB Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001) into my Roamio Basic. When I plugged everything in, all I got were alternating blinking lights on the front (green and amber together, then the red) -- no picture on the TV. Opened everything back up again and reseated the drive, thinking the SATA connection might've been loose. Plugged it back in and got exactly the same behavior. Proceeded to put the original drive back in, and all is well -- normal start and operation.

FWIW, I tried a ST2000DM001 in my Roamio and it worked fine.

Others have posted that they took a drive straight from their PC that was already formatted with NTFS and it worked. Same for drives from earlier model TiVos. I don't THINK that you need to zero it, but it can't hurt. The WD or Seagate diagnostics can both handle the job, and the free version of Active KillDisk is another alternative. In your case I'd probably use SeaTools so that if it errors out you can use the log to start the RMA process.

Others have posted that they took a drive straight from their PC that was already formatted with NTFS and it worked. Same for drives from earlier model TiVos. I don't THINK that you need to zero it, but it can't hurt. The WD or Seagate diagnostics can both handle the job, and the free version of Active KillDisk is another alternative. In your case I'd probably use SeaTools so that if it errors out you can use the log to start the RMA process.

Thanks for the data point -- much appreciated! I'm currently 70% through zeroing the drive with KillDisk, so I'll be able to try again this afternoon. If that doesn't work, I'll format the drive with NTFS and try again. If that doesn't work...well, like I said above, I guess I'll have another 2 TB external HDD after I buy an enclosure.

Thanks for the data point -- much appreciated! I'm currently 70% through zeroing the drive with KillDisk, so I'll be able to try again this afternoon. If that doesn't work, I'll format the drive with NTFS and try again. If that doesn't work...well, like I said above, I guess I'll have another 2 TB external HDD after I buy an enclosure.

Please report back! I stress tested a ST2000DM001 (did we all get in on the $45 deal at TD?), deleted the partition and am currently getting the no picture/alternating flashing lights on the Roamio I put it in. If I stick my ear to the case, it almost sounds like you can hear the hard drive trying to initiate its spin, but the roamio isn't providing enough power. I know these are 7200rpm drives, but I wouldn't have expected the power difference to be a cause for a problem.

(light flashing pattern is: blue+red on right, then green on left)

edit: it worries me that the base roamio drive requires +5v 0.316 A and +12v 0.155 A whilst the ST2000DM001 requires 0.75 A... I'm thinking the base roamio power supply is skimpy.

Tiger Direct. There was a $25 off $100 "clearance" rebate and $30 rebate on the Seagate 2tb drive. The $100.00 price only lasted for like a day and it wasn't really advertised.

Yup, this. Saw it on SlickDeals and jumped on it right away, thinking it would be perfect for my Tivo. Ummm...

Quote:

Originally Posted by el aye

Please report back! I stress tested a ST2000DM001 (did we all get in on the $45 deal at TD?)...

I'm at this point believing something is going wrong with the drive not getting enough power to spin up.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I live in Indy and was one of the lucky 60,000 to lose power. Ours was out almost 3 days, so we've been hotel-bound and JUST got back home today. Whew.

Anyway, I haven't stuck the drive back in after zero'ing it, but I'll do so later tonight. I'm in total agreement with you that it seems to be a power issue. That was actually my first thought when I put it in and listened (much like you), but I figured that was foolish...why would a big ol' Tivo unit not put out enough power for a HD? That said, since you're experiencing the same issues and seeing the same results, I'm afraid that's probably the cause. In which case, I'm not near enough expert to figure it out. Let me know if you made any progress, though!

I know these are 7200rpm drives, but I wouldn't have expected the power difference to be a cause for a problem.

7200 RPM is going to definitely draw too much juice, especially for the tiny wall wart my Raomio Basic came with. Nevermind the heat concerns I would have with a 7200 RPM drive. Way, way overkill.

The 5400 RMP WD Red's would be what I would be putting in if I didn't already have an extra 3TB Hitachi that I poached from my NAS. The last couple of times I have ordered Red drives I got them for the same price as other drives. And Red's have one critical feature that will ensure they will be the only drives I ever buy from now on - bearings on both ends of the shaft that the platters spin on. Previously only SAS or Fibre Channel drives had that design feature, SATA drives only had bearings on one end - the end of the shaft with the motor, the other end is just "out there". Hence the huge difference in mean time between failure (MTBF) for SAS/FC drives and SATA drives. For a slight premium, at most, or the same price if you just catch 'em on sale getting any drive other than a red is idiotic IMNSHO at this point....

__________________
Tivo Roamio and Tivo Mini - woot!
Tivo Premiere - probably to be replaced by another Mini
Series 3 - On the way out the door
Tivo HD - On the way out the door

Personally, before swapping a hard drive, I would:
1) Power it on and wait until it fully boots through the Welcome video.
2) Get through Guided Setup (this includes a connection to Tivo's server, IIRC).
3) Pair the CableCard.
4) Record 4/6 things at once to use every tuner.

This ensures the device is fully working in all the ways that are important to me.

2 TivoHd units, 3 premiere units and now a Roamio plus and Ive upgraded them all. Ive never ever used anything but WD AV-GP type drives. They are very quiet, low power, low heat, fast enough (no reason for 7200 RPM) and capable of multiple simultaneous streams with ease. I have had ZERO failures and the TivoHD's are still going.

Thinking about getting rid of my current S3 in favor of a 3TB Roamio. With specials now, price diff between a Plus and Pro is $150, which is getting close to the cost of a 3TB WD AV-GP; so it's almost a wash as to whether I buy a Plus and upgrade immediately, or just buy a Pro.

Question is, do we know what kind of disks TiVo is using? Is there an advantage to upgrading the HD yourself in that perhaps you have a better quality (more reliable?) disk that way?

i just upgraded my plus to a pro. went smooth, simplest tivo upgrade ever

i did guided set up with the stock hdd
I paired the cc & ta with with the stock hdd
tested the tuners
swapped out the drives with a 3tb unit
powered it up & repeated guided set up

i did not have to repair the cc. i'm even getting the switched vid channels

question, with kmttg, is it possible transfer all my recordings that are transferable from my old tivo to the new one? i've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out. I got my SP moved over.

question, with kmttg, is it possible transfer all my recordings that are transferable from my old tivo to the new one? i've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out. I got my SP moved over.